Please login to continue.

Captions provided by CCTubes – Captioning the Internet! Conservation laws are among the most important tools in physics. They feel as fundamental as you can get. And yet they’re wrong – or at least they’re only right sometimes. These laws are consequences of a much deeper, more fundamental principle: Noether’s theorem.

You can further support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime

Conservation laws are the cheat codes of physics. They make it possible to solve physics problems that would otherwise be painfully difficult, or even impossible. More than cheat codes – conservation laws are close to the source code – they emerge from profound and simple truths about the basis of reality. They emerge from the fundamental symmetries of nature. The connection between conservation laws and symmetry is encapsulated in Noether’s theorem. But before we dive into this extremely elegant idea, let’s talk about the seeming paradox that inspired it, and the genius who discovered it.

Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Graphics by Grayson Blackmon
Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow and Linda Huang
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)

About CCTubes

Our mission is to caption the internet for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. We provide an easy way for you to get any video captioned by our highly skilled staff. Every video is captioned individually and then reviewed for quality assurance.